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When God blesses a person -- me -- I have to pay it forward." -- Calvin Duncan

The first time I met Calvin Duncan, he told me, "My life is a miracle." Those were not the words I expected to hear from a man who had spent 28 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for a crime he didn't commit.

That day in the summer of 2013, Duncan was showing me around the gutted house in Bywater that would one day be his home.

"This is my mansion," he said, with a sweep of his hand.

The 120-year-old house had been a gift from a childhood friend who bought it at a sheriff's sale in 2012. It was badly in need of repair, and although Duncan had been working on it every weekend, he'd made little progress.

Sunshine poured in through holes in the roof, and we stepped around holes in the floor. But, like many old New Orleans homes, the house -- with its brick piers, old-growth pine framework, and cypress siding -- was worth saving.

"The piers are in excellent condition," Thom Pepper said. "The sills, all the bones of the house, are fine."

Pepper is executive director of Common Ground Relief, a nonprofit group that's been helping people repair their homes since Hurricane Katrina. In the beginning, volunteers from around the country did the gutting and cleaning of homes that flooded when the levees broke. But when the actual rebuilding began, Common Ground hired local contractors and skilled labor to do much of the work.

"Our focus has always been on job creation and job training for local residents," Pepper said. "With the huge unemployment rate in Orleans Parish, we needed to create jobs, and we needed to build quality housing at an affordable price."

"What makes the city unique is these funky old houses," he said. "There are thousands of houses like this in New Orleans that are architecturally significant. It's a shame we can't save more of them."

Last week, Duncan and Pepper couldn't stop smiling when they gave me a tour of the beautifully restored house near St. Claude Avenue. The outside is painted dusty rose, and the inside is a whole rainbow of colors.

The 1,400-square-foot house will not only be home to him. It has a separate bedroom, bathroom and living area where a newly released prisoner will live rent-free while Duncan mentors him and helps him find his way in the world.

"It's exciting the day you get out of prison," Duncan said, "but when the sun goes down, you think, 'Where am I going to live?' What am I going to do for money?'"

He showed me the two large bathrooms, which he considers essential for him and his house guest.

"Look -- a toilet where nobody's next to you," he said. "In prison, there's zero privacy. There are no doors to close, none at all. Having your own room, your own space, is hard to imagine."

When Common Ground took on Duncan's project, Pepper knew it would be a daunting task. The historic house had been vacant for 40 years, it had flooded when the levees broke, and the roof had leaked for decades. Still, he knew it had "good bones."

Before they began the renovation, an engineer examined the house to make sure it was sound, and an architect drew up plans for it. Then Common Ground had to raise the money and get contractors and suppliers on board.

"We knew what we were getting into, but I thought, 'What the hell,'" Pepper said. "We really wanted to do this for Calvin."

I could understand why he felt compelled to help Duncan. If ever a man has made the best of a bad situation, he has.

Duncan grew up in the Desire housing development, and after his mom died, he bounced around from relative to relative and from one school to another.

"When I was arrested, I was in the Job Corps and close to enlisting in the military," he said.

He was 19, and he was charged with murder due to a mistaken identification. He had no support, no knowledge of how the court system works, no money, no nothing.

"Everybody told me I was going to get the death penalty," he said.

So he decided he would have to figure out a way to help himself.

While he was in Orleans Parish Prison, he tried to find out the facts of his case and learn how the legal system worked. He studied legal case law by reading the cases his girlfriend copied for him at the Louisiana Supreme Court Law Library, and he was fascinated.

"I fell in love with the law," he said.

But he could never get access to his case, and after four years at Orleans Parish Prison, he was sentenced to life without parole, probation or suspension of sentence and sent to Angola in 1986.

I'll always remember what he told me about ending up there:

"It was like going from hell to paradise, because at Angola I got to go to school and pursue something I loved," he said.

He earned his GED, continued studying law and became an inmate counsel substitute or "jailhouse lawyer," giving legal advice and assistance to fellow inmates. Over the years he helped many inmates get out of prison, but he could never get access to the documents he needed to help himself.

In 2003, the Innocence Project New Orleans took on his case and found evidence that he was not guilty of the murder. But it was nearly eight years before he was released on Jan. 7, 2011.

By then, he had served as a paralegal for 23 years and had spent 19 years working with prisoners on Death Row. He had taught law classes for 15 years and GED classes for seven.

"I spent all my time helping people," he said.

Of course, Common Ground wanted to help Duncan, but it was about more than helping a good man get his first home. It was also about showing people that historic homes in New Orleans can be brought back to life, and that it can be done without costing a fortune.

"People are afraid to tackle these projects, but now we know we can do it," Pepper said. "Now we have a model, and we want to share it with everyone."

Many of the local contractors and suppliers Common Ground uses offered discounts and donated time to rebuild Duncan's house, but Pepper kept track of what the retail cost would have been. His figures include the cost of local contractors and labor, materials, appliances and Orleans Parish sales tax. And the sum is surprisingly affordable.

"Retail, it would have been less than $90 per square foot, and the pre-renovation condition of this house was the worst of the worst," Pepper said.

He told me about attending a City Council meeting in 2006 where people discussed demolishing the old houses that had flooded all over the city and putting up new modular housing in their place.

"They wanted to tear down all this funky stuff in really cool neighborhoods," he said. "I knew that would totally destroy the character of New Orleans."

What makes the old houses worth saving, Pepper said, is the original workmanship and the materials, like the pine and cypress in Duncan's house that are nearly indestructible.

"We were able to save almost all the cypress siding, but now the house is insulated. It has two central air conditioners, two hot-water systems, two washer-driers. Everything is state-of-the-art," he said.

They also worked to keep the character of the house intact.

"We saved all the original architectural elements," Pepper said. "We had enough of the original stuff to go on so we could replicate what we couldn't save."

Duncan's living room has crown molding and fluted trim, and the living area on the other side of the house has the original brick fireplace. One of my favorite parts of the house is the salvaged Spanish tile that graces the roof above the front porch.

"The old houses in New Orleans may look beat up, but look how attractive they can be," Pepper said. "This is a really lovely 3-bedroom, 2-bath house."

Saturday (April 18) is Duncan's 52nd birthday, and he's getting the perfect gift: His renovated 120-year-old historic house. The official ribbon-cutting will be next Thursday (April 23), and then he'll move his few belongings into it.

"I'll buy my furniture as I can afford it," he said.

As happy as Duncan is to be moving into his dream house, he seems even happier to be able to offer a wing to a wrongly convicted prisoner freed with the help of the Innocence Project New Orleans.

"People did that for me when I came out, and it meant so much," he said. "When God blesses a person -- me -- I have to pay it forward."

Duncan works with Light of Justice, helping prisoners get access to courts, and he's also working toward a paralegal degree at Tulane University.

But, right now, he is focused on moving into his first real home and offering it as a refuge to another former prisoner.

"Once I've paid my debt to God, I can go pursue my education," he said. "This is the final step, and then I'll go to law school."